Monday: I discarded a bit a of dental floss, a q-tip and a small piece of greasy wax paper. My husband, Steve, discarded one of those paper on one side, foil on the other side type of wrappers that his breakfast sandwich came in.

Tuesday: Steve came to the end of his package of Advil sinus and threw away the blister pack. I discarded some more dental floss (I had a dentist appointment, how could I not floss?)

Wednesday: The day has only just begun and I resorted to using one of those sticky-tape lint rollers to get cat hair off of my black pants. The reusable lint remover wasn’t cutting it.

Technically speaking, we have not met the zero waste goal, but we’re generating so little that I’m deeming it a successful week so far.

We have gone from thinking, “how can we reduce our trash” to “how do we not generate any trash.” The steps we took over the past eight weeks as laid out by The Rubbish Diet Challenge creator, Karen Cannard, really helped us get to this point. (And check out her blog to see how the other rubbish dieters are faring.)

Steve and I were talking about the challenge with some friends last night who were baffled at the thought of not throwing anything away (they thought it was a bit weird). As we were taking about what we had ‘given up’ over the past 8 weeks to reduce our waste, I realized that we hadn’t sacrificed anything much at all. We simply realized what we could do without.

Let’s see what else we can do without for the remainder of Zero Waste Week…

3 Responses to Zero Waste Week Continues

I totally agree that this is not about sacrifice. It is about planning and thinking ahead. For example, on Sunday I went to a Vietnamese cooking lesson. What I didn’t realise (not in the literature before the event) was that we would be able to take home leftovers and samples of what we made (not just devour on the spot). So I didn’t bring my carry bag or tupperware. On the upside though, the stock was funnelled into re-used screw top wine bottles. I was a super clever trick I took away, along with a plastic bag or two 😉